Review article The conservation movement in Zimbabwe: an early experiment in devolved community based regulation Graham Child1 & Brian Child2* 1Trafalgar Place, Fish Hoek, Cape Town 2University of Florida, Florida, U.S.A., and Stellenbosch Institute of Advanced Studies, University of Stellenbosch Received 23 October 2012. To author for revision 17 April 2013. Accepted 20 June 2014 This paper describes how the Zimbabwe Natural Resources Act of 1941 nurtured a civic landholder-based conservation movement, the Intensive Conservation Area movement (ICA). This is not recorded in the published literature. It provides a rare insight into the efficacy of environmental regulation that legally devolves use rights and regulatory responsibility to communities of landholders, and favours democratic processes above top-down regulation. The main message is that natural resource governance is effective when (a) landholders are genuinely empowered with the rights to use and manage natural resources provided, and (b) this occurs within a framework of devolved and collective self-regulation through structures built democratically from the bottom up. The effectiveness of these structures is surprisingly sensitive to any reduction in democratic control. The ICA movement anticipates, and is aligned with, the emerging theories of common property, scale, management, systems thinking and new institutional economics. These have common roots in the principle that human affairs and complexity are best managed where hierarchies of nested institutions serve the bottom layers, not the top. This suggests that entitling landholders, including communities, with full choice to use and management natural resources, and relying on local collective action to control environmental abuses or externalities, will strengthen future approaches for natural resource governance, including for wildlife and southern Africa. Keywords: Zimbabwe, wildlife governance. INTRODUCTION ment Programme for Indigenous Resources) Starting with the Natural Resources Act of 1941, programme, which was exceptionally bold in giv- Zimbabwe initiated a bold experiment in devolved ing to communities the rights to use, manage and and democratic natural resource governance on benefit from wildlife. The well-crafted nature of private and communal land, the Intensive Conser- CAMPFIRE is also noted in the literature (e.g. vation Area movement (ICA). This story is largely Borgerhoff Mulder & Coppolillo, 2005). However, invisible because, despite widespread local acclaim, people seldom ask where these ideas, or the confi- it has not been documented. We rely on a few dence in entrusting wild resources to local people, sources in the grey literature and personal discus- came from. In fact, as we will explain, Zimbabwe sions with its leaders and participants over many had been experimenting with devolved conserva- years to capture the lessons of how and why it tion for over fifty years, in ways that were remark- worked over five decades, and what factors later ably positive and uncontested. From the very start, undermined it.endnote i conservation was managed as a civic movement People are much more familiar with Zimbabwe’s which recognized that systems needed to be built pioneering CAMPFIRE (Communal Areas Manage- from the bottom up, and to serve the interests of *To whom correspondence should be addressed. the bottom in terms of landholder’s livelihoods, E-mail: [email protected] productivity and environmental sustainability. African Journal of Wildlife Research 45(1): 1–16 (April 2015) 2 African Journal of Wildlife Research Vol. 45, No. 1, April 2015 These bold policy experiments preceded much of resource movement to theorize about resource the literature with which we are now familiar, giving governance. The norms guiding this movement rise to ‘principles’ that were intuitively derived and are congruent with theories as wide-ranging as absorbed as societal norms long before they were systems thinking, common property theory, new codified by scholars. Key examples are the impor- institutional economics, governance and manage- tance of persuasion rather than compulsion in ment theory. This suggests that the success of the environmental regulation (see below), and the movement was no accident and that it provides norm of maximizing the amount of wildlife income important lessons for contemporary governance reaching the landholder. In the discussion we will of land and wild resources, including the emerging show how this conservation movement antici- Landcare movement on private land (Curtis & pated Ostrom’s design principles for common Lockwood, 2000; Mulder & Brent, 2006; Prager & property resource institutions by five decades Vanclay 2010), and community conservation. (Ostrom, 1990), and was true to and may well have stimulated Murphree’s principles of scale A BRIEF HISTORY OF LAND TENURE AND (Murphree, 2000), in addition to new theories of USE IN ZIMBABWE organizational management which emerged in the Natural resources, through agriculture, mining, 1960s. and wildlife provided the mainstays of Zimbabwe’s Although the principles and norms spawned by economy.* The use and abuse of these renewable the ICA movement are almost invisible in the litera- resources caused enlightened concern from an ture, they have spread quietly but widely, perhaps early date, with demographic and consumption because they have universal import. It was only in pressures making resources susceptible to what is the 1970s and 1980s that these began to be generally perceived to be degradation, including codified. A good example is the ‘CAMPFIRE loss of grasses, trees, soil and soil water. principles’ (Child, 1996; Murphree, 2005). Here, Prior to white settlement in 1890, the indigenous we see the emphasis on devolved governance and black population numbered only about half a local economic benefit learned through the ICA million people, livestock numbers were low and movement being absorbed into the ‘CAMPFIRE cultivation was by hand. Pre-colonial settlement Principles’. These ideas then spread through the favoured light granite soils because these were region through the sustainable use movement and easily tilled by hand, and was centred on Great community conservation, and were re-tested and Zimbabwe and a crescent in the east and south of improved. They also spread globally with almost the country where rainfall was also reliable identical wording to that used by the sustainable (Zinyama & Whitlow, 1986). use movement in southern Africa (SASUSG, White government, in the form of the British 1996, 2003) re-emerging in the Addis Ababa Prin- South Africa Company under Royal Charter from ciples and Guidelines for the Sustainable Use of Queen Victoria, coincided with a reduction in Biodiversity (CBD, 2004). warfare, and led to the emergence of a money The majority of this paper focuses on the history economy, modern agricultural technology includ- of the ICA movement, but the importance of this ing mould-board ploughs. Together with modern story lies in its theoretical interpretation, and in medicine and veterinary services this led to the its insights for the challenge of the cross-scale rapid growth of the human population and live- governance of natural resources. While the paper stock after the decimation of livestock and game focuses largely on private land, we also discuss in 1896 by the rinderpest pandemic. Cattle (Bos communal land. We have had to tread carefully to taurus) increased some 88 fold in 33 years from an avoid becoming embroiled in Zimbabwe’s highly estimated 28 000 head after the pandemic, to contested, emotional and racialized history, but 2.47 million in 1930 of which 1.56 million were black have persisted because this example has impor- owned (Southern Rhodesia, 1932). By 1939, the tant lessons for natural resource governance. indigenous population had trebled. There were Namely, that local communities resisted top-down 91 000 ploughs, and ecological deterioration was natural resource governance even when it was widespread and increasing (Gorden-Deedes, technically sound, but were appreciative of the 1961) as resource scarcities intensified. White much more inclusive and democratic approaches farmers also diversified and intensified production, exemplified by the ICA movement. *We refer to the country as Zimbabwe, although it was previously We use the experience of Zimbabwe’s natural called Rhodesia (1965–1980) and Southern Rhodesia (1898–1965) Child & Child: Early experiment in devolved community based regulation in Zimbabwe 3 causing further degradation of the resource base Journal in 1909 (Gordon-Deedes, 1961). In the by the 1930s (Kwashirai, 2006) as marketing absence of specialized environmental legislation, opportunities increased (Vincent & Thomas, 1961). legislative steps in 1913 used the existing ‘Water By the 1930s there was a dual land tenure Ordinance’ and ‘Herbage Preservation Ordinance’ system in Zimbabwe that encapsulated racial to ration public water and prevent indiscriminate inequalities. Colonial era division of land between veld burning that ‘caused accelerated soil ero- whites and blacks was initiated by the British sion’. Government before 1900 when the British South Also in 1913, the Rhodesian Agricultural Journal Africa Company was required to reserve a third of published its first bulletin on soil erosion by W. the country exclusively for blacks.Blacks could still Martin Watt. This advocated contour ploughing purchase land in the remainder of the country, but and grassed contour